Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Google Elections hub is now beginning to show the results of the Florida Primary (with Romney looking to have taken an early lead). The Google Map automatically updates as results around the state are announced.

Each county on the map will become shaded, as the votes come in, to show which candidate won the most votes. If you mouse-over the highlighted counties it is possible to view the votes cast for each candidate in the county.

Timemap is a JavaScript library to help add a SIMILE time-line to an online map, including Google Maps. The library includes a number of sample maps that show how you can use the SIMILE time-line with Google Maps. Two of the examples I haven't seen before and both maps are impressive in their own right.

The Temporal Heatmap from a Google Spreadsheet example is a map with markers that are sized on the map according to a data point in the spreadsheet. It is a great template for showing expanding and shrinking data points over time. In the example map the markers show cumulative deaths from asbestosis and silicosis in Texas over time.

The other example is On-the-fly Polygon Tweening. This map tweens a polygon so it grows and shrinks in conjunction with the time-line control. Polygon tweening could be used for any number of map based visualisations, for example to show a changing city boundary other time.

Deutsche Telekom's Worldwide Operations Map is a very nicely designed corporate map. It uses the Google Maps API Styled Maps feature to create a map that complements the colors of the company's corporate style and website design.

The map shows the scope of Deutsche Telekom's worldwide operations and lists the names of its companies operating in each country. The map can be searched by location and the information windows provide links to click-through to the country profile pages on the company's website.

Monday, January 30, 2012

The UK government's official crime map Police.uk, which uses Google Maps to map UK crime, has been visited over 450 million times and is by far and away the most popular UK government website.

Today the UK government announced that from tomorrow users of the maps will be able to get crime statistics for more locations. Currently users can search the map by postcode or by address and get results based on "an anonymous point on or near the road where they (the crimes) occurred."

As of tomorrow users will be able to search for crimes that have taken place at specific public locations, such as individual railway stations, shopping centres, airports, hospitals, parks and nightclubs etc.

Despite its popularity the map has not been free of criticism. The knowwhere blog posted a good round-up of some of the criticism the website faced in the week of its original release.

The new mapping of public spaces is also proving controversial. For example there are worries that nightclub owners may become much less likely to liaise with local police forces over criminal activity within their establishments if the result is that the clubs are then shown as criminal hotspots on the map.

Today the UK government also announced that from May users of the crime map will be able to see what happened after a crime was committed, what action was taken by the police and whether anyone was eventually convicted for the crime.

Ejecuciones en Chile entre septiembre y diciembre de 1973 is a powerful and poignant animated map visualisation of people executed by the Chilean military dictatorship between September 11 and December 31, 1973. The map animates through a time-line of the executions geo-locating those murdered by place of death or where the body was discovered.

As well as providing an animated time-line of the executions the map can be browsed by location, date of death, cause of death and by the name of individual victims of the Chilean dictatorship.

Many authors seem to have a special relationship with particular places. Some cities seem to have become almost inextricably linked with certain author's bodies of work, whether it be Charles Dickens' London or James Joyce's Dublin.

Novels: On Location is a good place to start if you want to find a book set in a specific location. In fact this Google Map acts a great guide for travellers keen to read a novel set in the places visited.

Using the map you can search for a location and find novels that are set there. For example, if you are lucky enough to be able to visit St Petersburg (or you just want to read something set there) you can consult Novels: On Location which recommends you read Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment.

Both maps include selectable layers and a dynamic legend. If you want to know how to create a dynamic legend with Fusion Tables and Google Maps then you should dive into the code in this Fusion Tables API Example Map.

This visualisation of the proposed rezoning works brilliantly in map form, not only because of the obvious geographic nature of creating new senate districts but because the map perfectly illustrates the disparity in the population sizes between the up-state and down-state proposed districts.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

City Cycle NOW! is a real-time Google Map of the number of bikes currently available at each of Brisbane's CityCycle bike stations.

The official CityCycle website also uses Google Maps to show the location of bike stations in the city. However to find out the number of bikes available at individual stations on the CityCycle map involves clicking on the station's map marker.

City Cycle NOW! on the other hand uses a coloured map marker system to show stations with no bikes (red), stations with only a few bikes available (orange) and stations with more than five bikes (green).

StreetAdvisor is a well thought out website that helps people to find great streets, neighborhoods and cities to live, based on the opinions of the people who actually live there.

Using StreetAdvisor it is possible to search for a city, neighborhood or individual street and read local reviews of the area, find out what kind of people already live there and get an overview of the pros and cons of the area.

When you search for a location the area is shown and highlighted on a Google Map. When you search for a city, map markers provide links to the StreetAdvisor pages for individual neighborhoods in the city. If you search for a neighborhood the markers provide links to the StreetAdvisor page of individual streets.

StreetAdvisor also allows individuals to ask specific questions about a location. So if you want to know what the average rent is, whether the area is safe or child friendly etc you can ask the question on StreetAdvisor and get answers from people who know the area well.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Forgotten.pl is a Polish website dedicated to abandoned buildings, rail-roads, underground tunnels, castles, military sites and any other locations that have long been neglected.

The site has a huge database of user submitted abandoned locations. If you are keen to explore the abandoned Poland it is probably best to explore the site using the category filter. Each category (buildings, military, castles etc) has its own Google Map that allows users to search for individual entries by location.

This visualisation of the proposed rezoning works brilliantly in map form, not only because of the obvious geographic nature of creating new senate districts but because the map perfectly illustrates the disparity in the population sizes between upstate and downstate proposed districts.

The large red area to the north on the map shows that these proposed districts will each have a smaller population than the blue districts to the south of the map in New York City. In effect New York City voters will count for less than their up-state neighbors.

As The New York World states this "regional discrepancy is crucial to Republicans' efforts to preserve their narrow control of the Senate".

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Global News has created a series of Google Maps to visualise the 2011 Ontario election results.

Ontario Election Maps shows the results of 24,094 polls in six maps: plurality winner by poll, voter turnout and the four parties' results looked at in isolation. Each map shows a heat map of the results and you can click on individual electoral wards to view the results at that location.

The map can be searched by address or postal codes. A number of links, above the map, will take you to 14 regional views.

The Wall Street Journal created this great data visualisation to show how New Yorkers are using different kinds of MetroCards on the city's public transit network.

Examining MetroCard Usage uses the Google Maps API to present how the 30-Day Unlimited, Pay Per-Ride and Senior Discount MetroCards are used throughout NYC. Heat maps are created for each card type and useful information windows point out specific locations and usage of the cards that the WSJ finds interesting.

The visualisation also presents data taken after the 12/30/2010 fare increases to examine how usage of the different MetroCards may have changed after the fare rises.

Gavin Harris has released the code for an Opacity Control for Google Maps. The control is a slider button that can be used to adjust the opacity of map overlays used with the Google Maps API v3.

The slider control can be seen in action on NZ Topo Map, where it is used to control the transparency of topographic map tiles. The code is available for download and use by Google Maps API v3 developers under a Creative Commons Licence.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

BOMMap is an Australian weather map that allows users to view animations of the latest radar images from Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.

The initial view of BOMMap shows where it is currently raining in Australia and therefore where radar animations are also currently available to view on the map. Users just need to select one of the displayed map markers to view the latest radar animation from that location.

The creator of BOMMap has also set up a subReddit where users can submit suggestions and possible improvements to the map.

Google has just launched Google Public Alerts, a Google Maps based website to bring you information about relevant emergency alerts in your area.

The map shows weather alerts, public safety warnings, and earthquake alerts from US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service, and the US Geological Survey (USGS). For example, the map is showing right now flash flood and severe thunderstorm warnings at various locations in Texas and high wind warnings for South-western California.

There is some integration with the main Google Maps site as well, although you do have to search for the alerts. For example, at the time of writing, if you search for 'flash flood Texas' in Google Maps an alert appears in the Google Maps sidebar. You can then click on the alert to get further details.

I actually think Public Alerts deserves more prominence on Google Maps. I'd like to see it made available as a layer (it could sit very nicely just under the Weather layer option in the Google Maps drop-down menu).

Over the last few years the Centre of Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL has created some interesting visualisations of data from Twitter. For example, CASA's, Tweet-o-Metre shows the current level of Twitter activity in a number of major cities around the world.

CASA's Interactive Tweetography Maps uses the Google Maps API to present a number of topographical maps of New York, London, Paris and Munich based on where in the cities Twitter users are most active. The contours on the maps show the density of tweets, with mountains showing the most active locations on Twitter.

Digital Urban has now taken the data from the London Tweetography Map and visualised it with the 3d game engine Lumion. They say they are still in the early stages of development but, I think you will agree, the results are already pretty amazing.

CNN iReport is a portal for individuals to tell their own news stories. iReport includes many tools to help contributors tell their stories and discuss the issues that interest them.

The CNN iReport Map is a Google Map showing the location of user contributed stories. As well as browsing the stories by location via the map the submitted stories can be searched by 'most viewed', 'most commented' and 'most shared'.

If you click on a story's marker on the map you can read a brief introduction and, if the story interests you, click through to read the complete submitted story.

The lack of cycle paths on Google Maps is still a problem in many parts of the world. If you live in the south west of England though you can use The South West Adventure Cycle Map.

The map includes off road cycle trails in England’s south west region, including paths in Exmoor and Dartmouth National Park and in the Blackdown Hills. The trails are colour coded to show their severity.

To get more details about a trail you can click on it's track on the map and get information on it's length, difficulty and type of terrain. You can even click on points along a trail to get an elevation chart.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Google Hotel Finder is experimenting with an isochrone layer to search for hotels within a defined travelling time of a location. For example, this search with Google Hotel Finder shows all the hotels within a 30 minute public transit travelling time from the 2012 London Olympics Park.

The Hotel Finder experiment allows users to adjust the travelling time, switch between public transit or walking times, and refine the results shown by price range, star rating and date.

The Edmonton Journal created the map to visualise Edmonton's 2012 property assessments. The map allows readers to compare the average assessment of single-family homes by neighbourhood in 2012 and 2011; as well as the percent change from 2010 to 2011, 2011 to 2012 and during the five years from 2007 to 2012.

The map include selectable layers, a dynamic legend (that updates automatically when different layers are selected) and even includes the Edmonton Journal masthead.

If you want to know how to create a dynamic legend with Fusion Tables and Google Maps then you should dive into the code in this Fusion Tables API Example Map.

The Toronto Kiss Map wants to know about your kisses. Whether it's a first kiss, a last kiss, a hot and heavy kiss or just a peck on the check of Aunty Maureen then Toronto Kiss wants to know all about it.

The Toronto Kiss Map is a user contributed map of kisses that took place in Toronto. The map comes from Firefly Creative Writing, so contributors are also encouraged to the tell the story behind their kiss.

To add your own kiss to the map you just need to click on the map to show the location where the tongue fencing took place. You can then share your story about the kiss in 500 characters or less.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

The Google Elections hub is now featuring a Google Map of the South Carolina Primary Results. The map shows the number of votes cast for each of the Republican candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in each of the South Carolina counties.

Each county on the map is shaded to show which candidate won overall in the area. If you mouse-over a county it is possible to view the votes cast for each candidate.

The German courts recently decided that Berlin Airport can operate flights between 5 am and midnight. Residents who live close to the airport say that this gives them just a 5 hour window in which it is possible to sleep.

German newspaper Taz this week created a very useful visualisation of air pollution caused by aircraft at Berlin Airport. Fluglärm-Karte BBI-Airport Berlin shows the number of decibels along the flight paths to and from the airport and in the immediate vicinity.

Google Maps that show the current weather and short-term forecasts are always useful. Combine the weather with real-time geo-tagged Tweets about the weather and you get a very interesting application.

Wettervolke is a nice Google Maps based application to view the current weather and local Twitter messages about the weather.

The current weather conditions are displayed on a Google Map using the standard weather map symbols. The current temperature is also displayed directly on the map. As well as the current weather conditions it is possible to view a forecast for the rest of the day and for tomorrow's weather.

WorldMap is a new open source mapping platform from Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis. One feature that makes WorldMap very useful is the thousands of data layers that the service provides. Users of WorldMap can also easily import and display their own data layers on a map.

WorldMap has already created over 700 mapping layers and users have created more than 500 maps. Therefore, as well as creating their own maps, users can search and view maps from the hundreds of maps already created.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

WorldMap is a new open source mapping platform from Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis.

Users of WorldMap can quickly create a map from their own data layers or from data layers already added to the WorldMap. Viewers of created maps can control the data layers seen on the map from a sidebar and can choose to view the data on top of Google Maps or OpenStreetMap map tiles.

WorldMap has already created over 700 mapping layers and users have created more than 500 maps. Therefore, as well as creating their own maps, users can search and view maps from the hundreds of maps already created.

Friday, January 20, 2012

If you search for a location in Google Maps you now see the area highlighted on the map. If you zoom out a little Google Maps shows the area shaded in pink with a dotted boundary. When you zoom in on the map you should just see a dotted boundary line around the searched for area.

Another new addition to Google Maps is train information in the UK. Google has worked with thetrainline.com to allow UK users to search for train journeys across the country with information from more than than 2,500 rail stations and 170,000 routes nationwide.

To get train information in the UK you just need to enter your staring point and destination in 'Directions' and select the public transit icon.

By now you must have heard that there is a Google Maps based game coming to Google+ next month. If you can't wait until February then you could instead create your own analogue version of the game.

Pegman's Day

This advert for Wired magazine seems to show what Pegman gets up to after a busy day of guiding the world around on Street View.

Athen's Public Transit Simulation

The developer behind the great Athens Public Transit Planner has created this amazing map simulation of a day in the life of the Athens Public Transport system.

Artistic GoogleArtistic Google is a Google+ account that encourages its followers to create artistic images from Google Maps Street View. Every Monday a new location is announced and the account's followers then find an interesting Street View picture and create something a bit more artistic from the image using photo editing software.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Here's a cool idea to ensure that fire hydrants remain accessible even when there is heavy snow.

Adopt-a-Hydrant lets anyone in Boston sign up to volunteer to clear a specific fire hydrant in the city when there is heavy snowfall. To adopt a fire hydrant users just need to click on its map marker and complete a short form.

On the usability front it is a bit annoying that the zoom control has been removed and that scroll-wheel zooming is also disabled on the map.

The German courts recently decided that Berlin Airport can operate flights between 5 am and midnight. Residents who live close to the airport say that this gives them just a 5 hour window in which it is possible to sleep.

German newspaper Taz has created Fluglärm-Karte BBI-Airport Berlin, a Google Map showing the noise pollution caused by aircraft at Berlin Airport. The map shows the number of decibels along the flight paths to and from the airport and in the immediate vicinity.

Umwelthaus has created a series of similar Google Maps, called Fluglärmkonturenkarten, showing noise pollution around Frankfurt Airport.

These heat maps show noise levels around the airport using data from 2007 and also show noise level predictions for 2020 in two different traffic modes.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Pick Up America is travelling coast-to-coast across America picking up litter. Their mission is to pick up trash across the country and, in the process, educate, and encourage a transition toward zero waste.

The Pick Up America homepage features a prominent Google Map showing the route of the clean-up tour, upcoming events, and links to blog posts about events already completed. The trek began in March 2010 and plans to finish in November.

This year in the spring the tour will be trekking the Utah and Nevada Desert, hiking over the Colorado Rockies in the summer and walking onward to the California coast in the fall.

Understandably one of the top Twitter trends today is SOPA. A lot of major websites around the world, including Wikipedia and Google, are today showing their opposition to the proposed US anti-piracy laws of SOPA and PIPA.

Mibazaar has created the #SOPA Tweets Map to show in real-time the latest Twitter messages that include the hashtag '#SOPA'. The map includes the option to watch either east coast or west coast Tweets appear on the map.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Tixik.com is a multilingual trip planning application. Using the application it is possible to search for travel destinations by location and by various categories, such as cities, beaches or ski resorts.

Each location features a Google Map as well as detailed reviews of points of interest that can be found at the location. As well as searching by location users can search via a number of categorised dedicated maps, such as a map of the world's longest beaches or the biggest coastal cities in the world.

The application includes a useful trip planner that enables users to save individual locations to a personal itinerary as they browse the website. Users can plan a trip to a destination and save places they want to visit on their trip and even on which day that they wish to visit. You can view an example itinerary for a trip to London here.

Brazilian airline TAM has released a nice destination finder called TAM Tips. The application allows users to search for vacation destinations based on their personal preferences.

TAM Tips uses Google Maps to show possible vacation locations based on TAM airlines' destinations. The destinations suggested on the map can be refined by selecting categories of interest, for example museums and galleries, sport, music, mountains, beaches etc.

If you click on a suggested destination on the map you can then read a review of the location and view the price of a ticket on TAM airlines to the destination.

Why not peg a stranger today? Yesterday Google Maps Mania featured a website called Love Diffusion that tracks cards given to strangers as random acts of kindness.

Gopeg has some similarities to Love Diffusion but is less about the kindness and more about random acts of mischief. Instead of giving cards to total strangers gopeg encourages its users to surreptitiously attach a clothes peg to their person (to the stranger that is - not to themselves - that would just be weird).

Each peg should feature the gopeg website address and a unique serial number. When the stranger later finds the peg they are then able to register the peg before attaching it to another stranger. Each peg that is found and reported to gopeg gets its own Google Map which means users can follow the travels of their pegs as they move from person to person.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Today Google announced an agreement with the World Bank to make Google Map Maker source data more widely and easily available to government organisations in the event of major disasters. Under the new deal World Bank partner organisations, which include government and United Nations agencies, will be able to contact World Bank offices for access to Google Map Maker data.

Surprisingly some of the early comments on this new agreement, that I have read, have been very negative about the new arrangement. Personally I'm far from convinced that the World Bank is a benign organisation and I'm pretty certain that it has often had a malign influence on the economies of developing countries.

However this agreement seems to me to be solely concerned with ensuring that the latest mapping data is more easily available to aid agencies and organisations in times of major disasters. Surely, that can only be a good thing.

Read Write Web (RWW) are arguing that Google have appointed the World Bank as "the gatekeeper" of Google Map Maker data. They appear to believe that this move is part of Google's 'closing off (of) access' to its mapping platform. In particular RWW seems keen to connect this new partnership with Google's recent introduction of charges to the use of the Google Maps API.

In November I responded fairly negatively to Google's new API charges. However I'm struggling to see how these two separate announcements are connected.

RWW claim that "Google has decided to compete with Ushahidi and other open-source efforts to solve this problem (crisis mapping)". RWW seem here to misunderstand the role of crisis reporting websites like Ushahidi. Ushahidi is built upon mapping platforms such as Google Maps and Open Street Maps. For it to work well in times of major disasters then it needs access to the latest crisis mapping efforts.

With Google's new partnership with the World Bank it appears that agencies and platforms such as Ushahidi now have a clear process as to how they can begin to access the latest mapping data from Google.

In many cases of major disaster the efforts of the Open Street Map community will probably mean that the most accurate and up-to-date maps will be openly available from Open Street Map and not from Google.

Google Maps and OpenStreetMap are two entirely different platforms with different goals. Google Maps relies on more centralised control over the moderating of community map edits than OpenStreetMap (I'm not going to go into the reasons why here). This means that the data behind Google Map Maker isn't openly accessible.

This partnership with the World Bank seems to me be an effort on Google's part to provide a means to access the latest mapping data rather than attempt to close access. I for one think it should be welcomed.

Love Diffusion is a website that aims to promote random acts of kindness.

Love Diffusion passes cards out to absolute strangers. The recipients of the cards can then report their thoughts and stories related to the cards by visiting the Love Diffusion website and then continue the process by passing the card on to another stranger.

The stories of each card as they travel from one stranger to another through these random acts of kindness are recorded on Google Maps. Each card gets its own map and each story reported to the website for the card is added to its Google Map.

Wettervolke is a nice Google Maps based application to view the current weather and local Twitter messages about the weather.

The current weather conditions are displayed on a Google Map using the standard weather map symbols. The current temperature is also displayed directly on the map. As well as the current weather conditions it is possible to view a forecast for the rest of the day and for tomorrow's weather.

Overlaid on the map is a Twitter weather window which displays the latest Tweets about the weather from your location. The weather symbols on the map update automatically when you pan and zoom the map. However to view the local weather Tweets users need to use the search box to position the map at the correct location.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Two of my favourite maps of the last week were environmental maps that both present users with access to large amounts of useful data.

Vizzuality's Carbon Calculator is a very impressive Google Maps based app that details the potential contribution of any area in the world to climate change mitigation.

The map allows users to draw an area anywhere in the world and view the carbon currently stored in the area, as well as the amount of additional carbon that potentially could be sequestered through restoration.

The United States Environment Protection Agency this week launched a Greenhouse Gas Data Publication Tool that allows users to view and sort 2010 greenhouse gas emissions data from over 6,700 facilities.

The tool uses Google Maps to allow the user to search and display the data in a number of ways, including by facility, location, industrial sector, and the type of GHG emitted. The tool can be used by individuals and communities to identify nearby sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

My other favourite map of the week is not environmentally themed but is impressive none-the-less. HotelMaps.com is a hotel finder that uses Google Maps to help you locate and book hotels near any destination.

What makes HotelFinder.com stand out from other map based hotel websites is the use of dynamic map markers to quickly show the user the price and star ratings of the recommended hotels. Using the map it is possible to search for hotels by date and location but the user can also refine the price, the star ratings and the guest ratings in their search.